Current electric hybrid vehicles (hereinafter “vehicles”) provide significant improvements in gas mileage over conventional vehicles by using an energy storage system in the form of chemical batteries to provide acceleration to the vehicle via an electric motor that offloads the energy from an internal combustion engine (hereinafter “ICE”). The energy storage system allows the recovery of the energy used to decelerate the vehicle. This improvement in gas mileage performance is greatest in driving conditions that involve continuous acceleration and deceleration of the vehicle, e.g., in congested traffic conditions.
If the energy storage can be used to cycle the ICE on and off during long periods of constant speed, an additional significant improvement of gas mileage could be achieved. However, this pulse and glide driving method drastically increases the cycle requirements for the energy storage. Energy storage, such as chemical batteries, generally cannot tolerate the higher cycle requirements necessary to implement automatic pulse and glide techniques. Further, the shortened lifetime of the chemical batteries and the high replacement costs generally prevent the use of chemical batteries for such an application. Thus, an improved flywheel pulse and glide system for vehicles may be beneficial to meet the cycle requirements.